RE: Issue with oprofile and Virtual Machines?

Thanks for the quick replies gentlemen!

Looks like maybe I need to upgrade my version of Parallels, it is several versions out of date and doesn't expose PMU virtualization.  Once I upgrade I'll report back.

Thanks,
Brad

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Petlan [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 4:06 AM
To: Brad Litterell
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Issue with oprofile and Virtual Machines?

Hi Brad and William,

> I built oprofile 1.1.0 from source on Ubuntu 12.04 (32-bit), but I’m 
> getting the unsupported processor error:
> 
> 
> 
> Here are some details:
> 
> $ uname -a
> 
> Linux Ub32 3.5.0-36-generic #57~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 20 
> 15:22:35 UTC
> 2013 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
> 
> 
> 
> $ operf
> 
> Your kernel's Performance Events Subsystem does not support your 
> processor type.
> 
> 
> 
> My underlying hardware is an Intel i7, therefore I’m suspicious that 
> the problem is running Ubuntu inside a virtual machine – in this case 
> Parallels on OSX.
> 
> 
> 
> Is there any guidance or documentation on how to run operf under VMs?
> 

It is always tricky. As William said, the guest needs to access the MSRs and identify the CPU. In KVM it is possible to set up the host to share PMU with the guest. In Parallels it should be possible as well, but I have no experience with that...

This link shows it should be possible...
http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v9/ga/docs/en_US/Parallels%20Desktop%20User%27s%20Guide/33236.htm

But here is a question without answers, who knows...
https://forum.parallels.com/threads/anybody-uses-pmu-virtualization-on-a-linux-guest.328958/


> 
> 
> I read one suggestion to switch back to 0.9.9, but I have a couple of 
> questions.
> 
> 

That is probably because you may use opcontrol with TIMER mode as a fallback if the hardware counters fail. The legacy opcontrol mode was dropped in 1.0 and so the TIMER interrupt mode.

opcontrol --deinit
/sbin/modprobe oprofile timer=1
opcontrol --reset
opcontrol --init
opcontrol --setup --no-vmlinux ## or use vmlinux...

opcontrol --start

## run something

opcontrol --dump
opcontrol --stop

opreport

> 
> 1. Will I need to rebuild my kernel to include a kernel driver for the 
> older format?

Probably no.

> 
> 2. How do I uninstall the existing 1.1.0 build that is now in my /usr folder?

Go to the oprofile dir and run `make uninstall`.

> 
> 3. Am I likely to have issues with 0.9.9 on a VM?

You should not be likely to have any other issues you don't have with 1.1.

> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Brad
> 

Michael


> 
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